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Misc Reviews Yamaha YDS-150 Wind Synth

6441 said:
A small YDS-150 heads-up - Clean the mouthpiece and reed

If you have a YDS-150 and are playing it much, be sure to take the mouthpiece off, remove the ligature and reed, and carefully wipe the grunge off of them, washing the mouthpiece in warm water and drying it inside and out with a soft cloth. After about a month, mine gets filthy with gunk that can't be good for the instrument or your own personal hygiene. This is probably also true of the WX-5 reed (which needs to be unscrewed) and mpc opening.
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It's worth noting the lack of instructions about cleaning the breathing tube itself, of course they don't want customers messing around in there as it's probably easy to garble the sensor, but one does wonder how that's going to pan out over years. I begin to have visions of some sort of aftermarket moisture trap, possibly adapted from the bagpipe world.
 
Yansalis said:
It's worth noting the lack of instructions about
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Everything! Midi and bluetooth barely mentioned. I do think there was something about removing the lig and reed to clean, but I don't recall what. This is an issue because most of us usually at least remove the reed from time to time. As rthis is a fake plastic reed, it never needs to be removed, so when you do, I'm sure you'll find the same disgusting gunk I saw when I cleaned it. I took the time to add a cushion to the mpc as well today.
 
It came today and I have not been able to put it down ALL DAY!!! I have also been experimenting with midi garageband and laid down a few tracks. I am blown away with this instrument. I played over the rainbow and then exchanged the instrument in garageband to strings. It was so cool. My playing time with the regular sax is dependent on how long my neighbours can bear it, now I can practice whenever I want. Fantastic
 
OK day 2 musings. It is a very good instrument to practice with. I have been able to use it as a midi controller for GarageBand and generated a few tracks. I have learned some new tricks and been able to transfer this new learning to my Yani 901, so I am convinced that it has real benefit. It is definitely not a sax, for that you have to blow your own horn, but for the practice and midi its terrific
 
After dozens of videos and as may recordings, I haven't changed my mind. It's an expensive piece for what it can do, but if you can afford it, it will serve many purposes, none of which are related to sounding like a saxophone, with one exception: With sufficient effects like reverb, echo, distortion or modulation and clever use of the analogue control, you can get a decent bari or soprano sound for a moment. Of the saxes, the other two are truly awful. But again, with external effects, you can get a tenor sound for a short phrase or two. I took pains to say in the title of this review, "Digital Instrument". As someone says about (or was it on the other forum or in another post), it's a synthesizer in the shape of a saxophone.

All in all, I'm very happy with it, but it is definitely NOT for everyone.
 
10kvClockMan said:
OK day 2 musings. It is a very good instrument to practice with. I have been able to use it as a midi controller for GarageBand and generated a few tracks. I have learned some new tricks and been able to transfer this new learning to my Yani 901, so I am convinced that it has real benefit. It is definitely not a sax, for that you have to blow your own horn, but for the practice and midi its terrific
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Small clip of YDS-150 playing through garageband with clarinet instrument selected.
 
A quick heads up regarding your custom fingering settings:

Back them up!

I did something in custom fingerings that corrupted the operation of the instrument, not just one fingering, but the operation of several keys. Fortunately, I had the last working version saved. Restoring it fixed the problem.

Savable configs is one of the things Yamaha did right in the app.
 
6441 said:
After dozens of videos and as may recordings, I haven't changed my mind. It's an expensive piece for what it can do, but if you can afford it, it will serve many purposes, none of which are related to sounding like a saxophone, with one exception: With sufficient effects like reverb, echo, distortion or modulation and clever use of the analogue control, you can get a decent bari or soprano sound for a moment. Of the saxes, the other two are truly awful. But again, with external effects, you can get a tenor sound for a short phrase or two.
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Based on my own viewing of many videos, I think my opinion of the sax sounds isn't quite as harsh as yours. The "soft" tenor sounds decent to me--or it would if it weren't afflicted by the auto-vibrato curse. The sound itself is pretty good. I agree that the bari sounds pretty good too. I'm not so sure about the alto or soprano.

Concerning the vibrato... If Yamaha decided to skip the bite sensor to keep the cost of the unit down, I can understand that. But it seems to me they could have included some kind of button to turn it on and off on the fly. If, for example, you could play a whole note and delay triggering the vibrato until the fourth beat, that would give you an element of control to make your playing more expressive, instead of having it kick in at exactly the same point on every note. This would just require another button, which shouldn't affect the cost very much. But of course that would have to wait for a new model. They can't fix that with a software fix.

Something they could do with a software fix is improve the legato. They should be able to flatten the attack when there is little to no space between notes. This is a basic property of wind instruments, and they really could do a better job with it.

I'm obviously interested in this gadget, since I keep posting here about it. But, for the money, I do expect something better than auto-vibrato, and that's holding me back.
 
ubizmo said:
hey could have included some kind of button to turn it on and off on the fly.
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That would be better, but ultimately, you can do a decent vibrato without the lip sensor, so a simple software option would be fine. Turning the vibrato, which is robotically constant speed and depth, would sound almost as bad. What they need to do is add a switch in the app, possibly for each custom sound. Honestly, if there was any way to reach them, I'd have several suggestions. The musical commubnity is unanimous about the vibrato.

As for sounds, it's true, with some effect manipulation, it's passable, for a minute. Even the very best sounds of the YDS are only tolerable for a short time. The very best, if you can get really good at a few things, is the harmonica with distortion and echo/reverb adn some shaping. Some of the things I refer to are the analog bend controller and certain typical arpeggios and licks.
 
6441 said:
That would be better, but ultimately, you can do a decent vibrato without the lip sensor, so a simple software option would be fine. Turning the vibrato, which is robotically constant speed and depth, would sound almost as bad. What they need to do is add a switch in the app, possibly for each custom sound. Honestly, if there was any way to reach them, I'd have several suggestions. The musical commubnity is unanimous about the vibrato.

As for sounds, it's true, with some effect manipulation, it's passable, for a minute. Even the very best sounds of the YDS are only tolerable for a short time. The very best, if you can get really good at a few things, is the harmonica with distortion and echo/reverb adn some shaping. Some of the things I refer to are the analog bend controller and certain typical arpeggios and licks.
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I agree with Randulo, the sounds are pretty meeeh but!!! I have played the sax more in the last 10 days than I have in the last 10 years because of the silent practice. I have picked up my lovely Yanni 901 and the learning from the YDS-150 has transferred so I am absolutely delighted. A couple of things about MIDI that are worthy of mention.

If you connect it to GarageBand (GB) and put the headphones on. The output of GB instruments comes into your ears. So if you are playing a Clarinet instrument it sounds great in your ears when you are playing the YDS. Also if you put the backing track into GB and get the beat right, you can play along to the backing track and record. I have had to do a bit of learning to get this to work in time, but the results are great. You can then replay the tracks and add additional instruments like trumpet trombone or bass guitar.

I think a mistake that people are making is comparing it to a saxophone, the outcome from this is only going to end up in frustration, misery and nastiness. Is it well built? - yes, can you practice on it? - yes can you be creative with a DAW (digital audio workstation like GarageBand)? - yes. Is it great fun?- yes, is it a sax? - well yes it works like a sax but sounds nothing like a sax.
 
I presume it's at least in the realm of possibility for them to update the software to link a variable vibrato to the analog controller.

As to reaching Yamaha, it is at least worth taking a first step, which is to contact the marketing manager for your market. At least in the US this seems feasible.
 
It's odd that of all the pros who did YouTube videos in advance and worked on it, they didn't think about the vibrato and how bad it sounds. That makes me think I won't waste my time. Either they said something and the Yamaha people weren't interested, or the entire rest of the players who've reviewed it are geniuses. It's a blatant fault. It is mentioned in most videos I've seen, so they can certainly know about it by now. I'm just glad I have uses for it.
 

Similar threads... or are they? Maybe not but they could be worth reading anyway 😀

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